FICTION / Classics From Kayleighbug Books

RECENT ARRIVALS

By Butler, Samuel

New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1957. Hardcover. Good. Salomon, Louis B. 399 pages; Great Illustrated Classics edition - "with illustrations of the author, his environment and the setting of the book, together with an introduction and captions by Louis B. Salomon" Ernest Pontifex, son of a bullying clergyman, leads a life of disarray. Ernest struggles with orthodoxy, lives in the slums, is thrown into prison, and marries the vulgar Ellen. Saved by the discovery that Ellen is already married, Ernest receives an inheritance, and is able to devote his life to literature, finally winning some success. ex-library with usual markings, heavy edge wear, corners bumped, threadbare at spine tips and edges;

By Johnson, Samuel; Kolb, Gwin (editor)

New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1962. Trade Paperback. Good. 112 pages; some edge wear, occasional highlighting in the text; Bored by the endless contentment of 'the happy valley', Prince Rasselas escapes with his sister. They rove the world searching for the secret of happiness and the ideal way to live. Repeatedly the pleasures they glimpse dissolve on closer acquaintance, and the great men they admire prove flawed. Where, then, are happiness and purpose to be found?

By Tolstoy, Leo; Magarshack, David (translator)

New York: Signet Classics, 1961. Mass Market Paperback. Good. 807 pages; spine and cover creasing, edge wear; In 1872 the mistress of a neighbouring landowner threw herself under a train at a station near Tolstoy's home. This gave Tolstoy the starting point he needed for composing what many believe to be the greatest novel ever written. In writing Anna Karenina he moved away from the vast historical sweep of War and Peace to tell, with extraordinary understanding, the story of an aristocratic woman who brings ruin on herself. Anna's tragedy is interwoven with not only the courtship and marriage of Kitty and Levin but also the lives of many other characters. Rich in incident, powerful in characterization, the novel also expresses Tolstoy's own moral vision. 'The correct way of putting the question is the artist's duty', Chekhov once insisted, and Anna Karenina was the work he chose to make his point. It solves no problem, but it is deeply satisfying because all the questions are put correctly.

By Barrie, James M

New York: A. L. Burt Company, c1940. Hardcover. Good/Fair. 454 pages; corners bumped, some edge wear to boards; jacket is in tatters. RKO-Radio Picture edition with clean, nice b&w photos of a young Katherine Hepburn in the beginning of the book. "The Little Minister" by J. M. Barrie was first published in Good Words Magazine, spanning the months January to December 1891. Reckoned to be Barrie's best work, it is one of several novels about the fictional village of Thrums, said to be modeled on Barrie's home town of Kirriemuir. In 1840's Scotland, a young Scottish pastor falls in love with an educated, radiant gypsy girl, who turns out to be a peeress who impersonates a gypsy and smoothes things over between rebellious weavers and the authorities in 1840 Scotland.

By Dickens, Charles

New York: Washington Square Press, 1966. Paperback. Good. 880 pagesl Reader's Enrichment series # RE706; faint spine crease, light edge wear; I really think I have done it ingeniously and with a very complicated interweaving of truth and fiction. So wrote Dickens of David Copperfield (1850), the novel he called his 'favourite child'. Through his hero Dickens draws openly on his own life, as David Copperfield recalls his experiences from childhood to the discovery of his vocation as a successful novelist. Rosa Dartle, Dora, Steerforth and Uriah Heep are among the characters who focus the hero's sexual and emotional drives, and Mr Micawber, a portrait of Dickens's own father, evokes the mixture of love, nostalgia and guilt that, put together, make this Dickens's most quoted and best-loved novel

By Hawthorne, Nathaniel

Philadelphia: David McKay, 1889. Hardcover. Very Good. 464 pages; some rubbing to extremities, corners lightly bumped; front and rear pastedowns have a library/Sunday school stamp on them but there are no other ex-library markings or associated trauma to the book; top-edge gilt; Hawthorne's short stories "rivet the attention [of the reader]. The style of Hawthorne is purity itself. His tone is singularly effectiveâwild, plaintive, thoughtful, and in full accordance with his themes.â¦ We look upon him as one of the few men of indisputable genius to whom our country has as yet given birth." âEdgar Allan Poe, The Broadway Journal

By Austen, Jane

New York: Magnum, 1968. Mass Market Paperback. Good. 350 pages; spine creasing, edge wear; A wonderfully entertaining coming-of-age story, Northanger Abbey is often referred to as Jane Austenâs âGothic parody.â Decrepit castles, locked rooms, mysterious chests, cryptic notes, and tyrannical fathers give the story an uncanny air, but one with a decidedly satirical twist.The storyâs unlikely heroine is Catherine Morland, a remarkably innocent seventeen-year-old woman from a country parsonage. While spending a few weeks in Bath with a family friend, Catherine meets and falls in love with Henry Tilney, who invites her to visit his family estate, Northanger Abbey. Once there, Catherine, a great reader of Gothic thrillers, lets the shadowy atmosphere of the old mansion fill her mind with terrible suspicions. What is the mystery surrounding the death of Henryâs mother? Is the family concealing a terrible secret within the elegant rooms of the Abbey? Can she trust Henry, or is he part of an evil conspiracy? Catherine finds dreadful portents in the most prosaic events, until Henry persuades her to see the peril in confusing life with art.